* Vatican helped prevent single-sex partnership law in Italy
* Gays criticise pope’s influence in developing world
* Campaigner says Benedict competed with Islam, evangelicals
By Robin Pomeroy
ROME, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Across the road from the Colosseum,
the ancient Roman stadium consecrated as a holy Christian site,
clients at a busy bar are raising a glass to the pope: toasting
the departure of the worst Church leader they can imagine.
For drinkers in Rome’s best known gay bar, Benedict’s
abdication is a blessing.
“He was less human than the last one,” said Flavia Servadei,
co-owner of “Coming Out” a small bar in Via San Giovanni in
Laterano which has been so successful since it opened in 2001
that the road has been renamed “Gay Street”.
In warm Roman summers, the bar attracts scores of men and
women, spilling onto the pedestrianised street. On the chilly
February day when Benedict announced his abdication, drinkers
huddled inside to absorb the news, unprecedented in the past 700
years.
“This was the most reactionary pope ever, who made
homophobia one of his battle cries,” Franco Grillini, founder of
Italy’s biggest gay advocacy group Arcigay, said in a telephone
interview. “So his resignation was good news.”
Italian gays and lesbians resent the influence that the
Catholic Church, from its headquarters in a walled city state on
the other side of Rome, continues to have on politics, despite
dwindling congregations and a largely secular society.
“COWARDICE”
While Britain, France and several U.S. states have allowed
or are considering allowing gay marriage, in Italy attempts to
create some limited form of civil partnership for same-sex
couples have failed.
“In Italy, politicians are much more servile to the Vatican,
they are very obedient, there is an element of cowardice,” said
Grillini.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are a
“grave depravity” and “do not proceed from a genuine affective
and sexual complementarity”. Homosexuals themselves, however,
should be “accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity”.
Although remembered by many people as a gentler figure than
his successor, Pope John Paul II criticised an international gay
pride parade through Rome in 2000 as an “offence to Christian
values” and reaffirmed that the Church considered homosexuality
“objectively disordered”.
Benedict, 85, who in his youth was considered a liberal
theologian, made the battle against Western secularism a central
part of his papacy and called gay marriage a threat to “human
dignity and the future of humanity itself”.
“I’m not even talking about marriage,” said Servadei, one of
three women who co-own the bar, instantly recognisable by the
rainbow logo above the door which has become an international
symbol of gay rights.
“Just the right to visit my partner if she is ill in
hospital. In Italy they can stop me doing that … I want the
recognition of equality between people that is in our
constitution.”
The 41-year-old accepts that no pope is ever likely to
endorse her views on many issues – “He’s a pope!” – but said
she was shocked when he received an African politician who is
pushing anti-gay law through parliament, something she saw as a
papal stamp of approval.
SOCIAL ISSUES
In December, the pope welcomed Ugandan parliament speaker
Rebecca Kadaga, one of the proponents of a bill that, in its
first draft, sought to impose the death penalty on gays.
At the heart of Africa where Catholicism is thriving, the
Ugandan parliament is still debating the bill, which no longer
has the death penalty clause but would still punish anyone who
“abets homosexuality”.
The Catholic Church is totally opposed to the death penalty
but Grillini blames Benedict for encouraging the developing
world to make laws that oppress gays.
Under Benedict, Grillini says, the Church has gone to more
conservative “extremes” due to the “fierce competition” from
radical Islam and evangelical Christianity.
“They are trying to stem the competition posed by the
religious radicalism of Islam or Christian fundamentalism by
adopting the same message … The Catholic Church is squeezed by
competition from new religious extremes that I believe represent
the real danger in today’s world.”
As the pope retires to a convent in the Vatican gardens,
anyone hoping that his successor will be more liberal on
homosexuality or other social issues such as contraception or
divorce, is likely to be disappointed.
All 117 men who will enter the conclave next month were
appointed cardinal – giving them the right to vote in the
secretive papal election – either by Benedict or his predecessor
John Paul.
“The college of cardinals is made up of very old people – a
male chauvinist gerontocracy,” said Grillini. “So we have no
illusion about a new pope having more moderate views about civil
rights and homosexuality.”
(Editing by Philip Pullella and Alison Williams)
